the initial reason is historical.

The game did many client side calculations in the past, allowing much more active players simultaneously compared to now.
This opened the door to exploits though, you had "meteor-showers" and flying players.

To fix these exploits, calculations were moved from client to server, stressing the servers extremely. So the amount of players per campaign had to be reduced, and even this could not fix lag and crashes.

WhyMustItBe wrote: »

Missing "Other" option: Most people drawn to a fantasy RPG MMO, specifically with the lore/background of the Elder Scrolls franchise, will not be the type of people who are particularly interested in PVP.

That is fine by the way, and the devs should embrace it TBH. It seems trendy at this point for every MMO released to NEED to devote time to developing and balancing PVP as a major aspect of the game, even making it non-optional after a certain level in open world questing areas like many eastern titles opening the door to griefing and other toxic experiences.

Not every game in the world HAS to be all about PVP. It is OK for a game to exist that focuses on lore, dungeons/raids, and RPG elements. They are called GENRES. Not everything has to be a melting pot.

Besides, anytime an MMO starts shoehorning PVP it inevitably leads to PVE systems being wrecked and the abilities/playstyle of that part of the game being "streamlined," nerfed, and generally made un-fun, all in the name of "balance," since for whatever reason no game developer in the universe seems capable of balancing PVP and PVE separately.

Appreciate your response and feedback but this poll is trying to solicit a response from the PVP community, not the aspects of the game you're referring to.

markulrich1966 wrote: »

the initial reason is historical.

The game did many client side calculations in the past, allowing much more active players simultaneously compared to now.
This opened the door to exploits though, you had "meteor-showers" and flying players.

To fix these exploits, calculations were moved from client to server, stressing the servers extremely. So the amount of players per campaign had to be reduced, and even this could not fix lag and crashes.

If that's the case, then it would indicate that basing the game's PVP around a smaller environment other than Cyrodiil would seem to be the way to go since the technology isn't available to support massive battles like you get in Cyrodiil without having user experiences be incredibly laggy.

Performance, broken sets, constant balance/combat changes... in that order, imo. PvP is a lot more unforgiving than PvE, if you lag for a second, and your heal/clock/mitigation doesn't cast, your attack doesn't land, or you couldn't roll/block, etc., you might die, whereas in PvE, unless you lagged during a one-shot mechanic that you failed to obey, then you'll most likely be fine. And it's not just about survivability--lag takes the enjoyment out of playing: ESO combat is awesome and fast-paced, if it takes long to move or cast things, or use siege, it's just not fun, and it makes the fight nonsensical. When you're lagging, even mounting your horse takes a bit, your character whistles and you only mount after a few beat--it affects everything. So I think that's the first reason. Then it's broken sets, it happened with Sload's in the past, and with Dark Conversion now, and for people who don't want to use OP procs for their builds, because they consider them cheese or they simply don't like that playstyle, it's really demoralizing. Especially when broken sets are used by groups on multiple of their members, so you basically don't know what hit you There's no balance in that, you either have to join in, or wait out till they nerf them, and that's why some players turned to the no-proc campaign this patch. Finally, changing combat features, classes, and skills every patch, not in terms of fine-tuning or adjusting, but bringing stuff upside down, is exhausting for the meta chasers, and optimization matters a lot more in PvP than PvE. It feels like there's no time to enjoy the patch, because you have to make a build from scratch, and when you finally get into it, the next update cycle drops with more changes announced.

Skoomah wrote: »

WhyMustItBe wrote: »

Missing "Other" option: Most people drawn to a fantasy RPG MMO, specifically with the lore/background of the Elder Scrolls franchise, will not be the type of people who are particularly interested in PVP.

That is fine by the way, and the devs should embrace it TBH. It seems trendy at this point for every MMO released to NEED to devote time to developing and balancing PVP as a major aspect of the game, even making it non-optional after a certain level in open world questing areas like many eastern titles opening the door to griefing and other toxic experiences.

Not every game in the world HAS to be all about PVP. It is OK for a game to exist that focuses on lore, dungeons/raids, and RPG elements. They are called GENRES. Not everything has to be a melting pot.

Besides, anytime an MMO starts shoehorning PVP it inevitably leads to PVE systems being wrecked and the abilities/playstyle of that part of the game being "streamlined," nerfed, and generally made un-fun, all in the name of "balance," since for whatever reason no game developer in the universe seems capable of balancing PVP and PVE separately.

Appreciate your response and feedback but this poll is trying to solicit a response from the PVP community, not the aspects of the game you're referring to.

If you're only trying to get responses from one group, you're essentially saying you want a biased poll. I bet 95% of PvP players will say that the lack of content is the issue.

Still, that response seems to be the heart of it - at launch, PvP was originally the endgame. Then everyone found out that the majority of the Elder Scrolls fanbase wanted "Skyrim with friends" instead of "go kill people!" which is why there wasn't much of an overlap in the populations of Skyrim players and ESO players. Over time ESO has been favoring the Skyrim playerbase a lot more and the game population has grown exponentially, whereas there was never a huge population of PvP players to draw from so they stopped really focusing on it.

Also the reason they're not dropping brand new modes is because the populations are already small, so spreading out the already small population isn't that effective. Especially in PvP where the gameplay requires people to see other people playing. The only thing that happens in PvE for a low population is that someone's not able to get the WBs in Hew's Bane or wherever. In PvP, if you're sitting in a 2h BG queue or riding through an empty Cyrodiil, you're not even coming close to playing what you wanted to. If they did drop a new mode, i) people would need to pay for it, and every patch leads to a horde of PvPers claiming they'll stop their subs, and ii) they would need a decent population in there to make it worthwhile unless they ended up closing another mode to get enough population there - see the recent removal of objective BG modes to try to spur interest in BGs.

PvP is also affected by the fact that few PvErs want to PvP. It's a massive learning curve, and there's really no 'training ground' - even the under50 campaigns are mostly dominated by PvPers who specifically reroll/gold out gear for their lowbies. Also, ESO has a high percentage of PvErs who absolutely 100% loathe the idea of being killed by another person, to the extent that that will drive them away from the game. Thus any new PvP content would have an easier time getting PvPers from other games and not from the PvE base... and the PvP community is very vocal about how the ESO PvP experience is lacking so that's unlikely to bring in new players. And for those cases when a PvEr comes into Cyrodiil to get their feet wet, they mostly run around solo... which is more than a little ineffective. Again, you pretty well have to have a group, and if you don't, you're not going to have a good time.

The constant swinging meta is another reason, since it's tiring to have to regear every patch. Yes, you can argue all day about whether PvE or PvP is responsible for nerfs (and both are the reason certain sets that worked well in the other got the nerfhammer), but it's difficult to try to keep up sometimes. Especially when something like Dark Convergence drops and everyone needs it right away since you have no chance unless you can cheese it right back.

Lag is an issue as well. This is an older game, but it still seems you need a beefy connection to be able to have a decent PvP experience. I know personally I'm not hit with lag too much, but I know a lot of people say that it's unplayable - I've only had a few times over MYM that the game was in slideshow mode. I actually (by accident) ended up in probably one of the most epic fights last week when I only went in to find some doors to repair for the endeavor and landed right in a massive siege of Kingscrest, where the Pact attacked the door and the east wall while loads of DC were inside. For me at least, the game ran fine until we got into the keep and then it stuttered a bit with all of the effects on the flags, but I know that could be literally unplayable for others.

All of that is turning PvPers away from the game and not brining new ones in. So ZOS sees that their populations are small (and I'm sure smaller than they report), which means that any new content would lead to crickets in Cyrodiil - which would kill any remaining PvP interest. So there isn't one issue, and your poll options are circular - ZOS won't release PvP content because the populations are low, because ZOS won't release content, because the populations are low, because...

Or perhaps some 12 or 24 man open pvp no teams arenas.

LAG

Honestly, the MAJORITY of players coming to ESO come here for the RPG aspect, not PVP. As much as PVP players love to think they are the uber population in the gaming world, they are NOT. There are a lot more solo-centric players out there who have been discovering, since high speed internet became more widely available... that MMOs are a great way to play a game over the long-term instead of being an ADHD game-hopper. MMO developers have subsequently found that solo-centric players are a huge group of gamers that haven't had much offerings to attract them, which is why so many MMOs are not catering to solo-centric and casual players.

People think ZOS doesn't have the data to see whether their resources spent on PVP have been beneficial or not? THEY DO! They know whether each PVP addition has given them increased revenue or not... and it's mostly been NOT! Just like 'group zone' content... ZOS knows how many players primarily play what content, and adjust their resource expenditures accordingly. Hence the reason they scrapped Craglorn as a group zone and stated they would never offer another group zone.

ZOS isn't stupid, their marketing/accounting departments know exactly what content delivers the most bang for the buck. They aren't going to invest a ton of resources to a venture that will deliver little long-term gain.

Picked one option but it's really both. The PVP community seems relatively small, which in turn makes it unattractive to put major focus on, which in turn affects the long-term health of the PVP community.

I love pvp in this game, and the premise of large sieges and open world PVP combat in Cyrodiil continues to be attractive to a lot of new and returning players alike. Friends often hit me up to help them get into PVP, and I often do my best to help them in any way I can (builds, gameplay tips, when to log in, what to do), but when faced with an uphill battle of both lag and a steep learning curve, most of them stick around for a campaign at best and then go back to whatever it was they were doing before that.

So we are at a point where it kind of becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy that a subset of the community remains small because it does not seem attractive to invest in it, but honestly if they manage to find a middle road for PVP that offers a taste of the freedom of Cyrodiil, but lets you find action in a way more akin to Battlegrounds (like a mid-sized 8v8 arena with fun objectives), I think it'd help both in terms of popularity and performance.

Most of the people I know who liked Cyrodiil PVP and later quit did so because of years of bad performance with no end in sight.

There were other contributing factors like the wildly shifting balance, or their class getting shafted, or IRL stuff happening. But for the most part, it wasn't that Cyrodiil never got updated or there was no new PVP content.

It was that Cyrodiil never got fixed, and fixing one minor bug often meant we'd get more bugs and worse lag.


(Adding new PVP content is not going to entice players who don't like PVP to begin with - consider that the existing content comes in for rounds of complaints from players who greatly dislike PVP every single time ZOS features it during events. Moreover, adding new PVP content is not necessarily going to attract players who like PVP unless it works properly, which ZOS has not shown that they are able to do.)

• Lags in Cyrodiil. Cyrodiil was supposed to be the flagship of pvp content, its core. While Cyrodiil is in such a depressing state, pvp has been pushed into the background and at the moment is just such optional content.
• In principle, I think that the new pvp content does not make sense. What is the difference in what scenery and according to what rules to fight? Look at the BGS, now there is a whole drama in the community discussing whether the objective modes are needed at all. New sets, new classes, new playstyles - that's what makes pvp varied and alive, not new locations and content.
• The game headed for casualness and attracting new short-lived players. As you can see, U32, like Dragonhold, do not have a new arena or trial. It's just another casual location like everyone else. And if ZoS thinks that the release of new pve high-end content is not necessary, then what about pvp? Nothing. Also, I think the reason is lockdown. In U32 there is not even a new companion - the main innovation of this year. After Blackwood's release, there was constant speculation on the forum about new companions. So even the desires of casual players are not met.
• Balance. In truth, I am personally tired of the domination of the Wardens and Necromancers. Tired of ballgroups in Cyrodiil. And there seems to be no light at the end of the tunnel. The introduction of new sets against ballgroups turned out to be so stupid.
• Colossal entry threshold. It is sometimes striking how bad the average ESO players are. And I'm talking about pve. Since the game is heading towards casual players, pvp is basically closed for them.

I think the issue is twofold. First, this was designed as a PvE game that had PvP in it. As such the PvE population should be stronger. The second reason is while Cyrodiil is fun it is not competitive PvP design and the competitive PvP, BGs, have a strange three-team design instead of the more common two-team design.

-Performance
- wild Meta swings (change fatigue)
- Performance
- Did I say Performance ?